a collection of weekly Radio Messages by

R.J. Rushdoony

Good Morning,
Friends volume 3

Edited by Susan Burns

chalcedon/ross house books

Vallecito, California
 Copyright 2018 by Mark R. Rushdoony
This volume is a unique compilation of the text of selected
radio messages delivered by the author over KSCO (Santa Cruz,
California) in 1953, 1954, 1955, and 1956. They appear here
in print for the first time.
Ross House Books
PO Box 158
Vallecito, CA 95251
www.ChalcedonStore.com

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval

system, or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic,
mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise — except for brief
quotations for the purpose of review or comment, without the prior
written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress: 2018958734

10 digit: 187999884X
13 digit: 978-1-879998-84-1
Printed in the United States of America
 Other titles by Rousas John Rushdoony
The Institutes of Biblical Law, Vol. I
The Institutes of Biblical Law, Vol. II, Law & Society
The Institutes of Biblical Law, Vol. III, The Intent of the Law
Systematic Theology (2 volumes)
Commentaries on the Pentateuch:
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy
Chariots of Prophetic Fire
The Gospel of John
Romans & Galatians
Hebrews, James, & Jude
The Cure of Souls
Sovereignty
The Death of Meaning
Noble Savages
Larceny in the Heart
To Be As God
The Biblical Philosophy of History
The Mythology of Science
Thy Kingdom Come
Foundations of Social Order
This Independent Republic
The Nature of the American System
The “Atheism” of the Early Church
The Messianic Character of American Education
The Philosophy of the Christian Curriculum
Christianity and the State
Salvation and Godly Rule
God’s Plan for Victory
Politics of Guilt and Pity
Roots of Reconstruction
The One and the Many
Revolt Against Maturity
By What Standard?
Law & Liberty
A Word in Season, Vol. 1-7
Chalcedon
PO Box 158 • Vallecito, CA 95251
www.chalcedon.edu
 Contents
1. The Meaning of Jazz.................................................1
2. Vengeance Is Mine, Saith the Lord...........................5
3. The God of Widows.................................................9
4. “The Stars in Their Courses”
Fought Against Sisera.............................................13
5. Hannah, Mother in God.........................................17
6. The Book of Ruth (Ruth 1).....................................21
7. The Kinsman’s Fields (Ruth 2)................................25
8. Our Next of Kin (Ruth 3).......................................29
9. The Inheritance (Ruth 4)........................................33
10. The Beginning of Knowledge (Proverbs 1:7)..........37
11. “In All Thy Ways Acknowledge Him”.....................41
12. The Price of Wisdom..............................................44
13. Search for Wisdom (Proverbs 2).............................47
14. Wisdom as Understanding (Proverbs 2:12-19).......50
15. Inheriting the Earth (Proverbs 2:20-22).................55
16. Wisdom and the Home..........................................58
17. Taken for Granted...................................................61
18. To Give Subtilty to the Simple...............................65
19. Light.......................................................................69
20. Love of God and His Word....................................73
21. Sheep.......................................................................77
22. The Shepherd..........................................................81
23. The Paths of Righteousness.....................................85
24. The Valley of the Shadow of Death.........................89
25. My Cup Runneth Over..........................................94
26. What Are You Waiting For?...................................98
27. Journey’s End........................................................102
28. The New Year........................................................106
29. How to Pray: Part 1 - Teach Us to Pray................110
30. How to Pray: Part 2 - Vital, Frequent Prayer........113
31. How to Pray: Part 3 -
Declaring Our Dependence on God....................116
32. How to Pray: Part 4 -
Long Unanswered Petitions..................................119
33. How to Pray: Part 5 -
The Fellowship of Prayer.......................................123
34. How to Pray: Part 6 -
Being Mindful of What You Pray For..................127
35. How to Pray: Part 7 - Prevailing Prayer................131
36. How to Pray: Part 8 - Hypocritical Prayer............135
37. How to Pray: Part 9 - How God Hears Prayer.....139
38. How to Pray: Part 10 -
Hallowed Be Thy Name........................................143
39. How to Pray: Part 11 - Thy Kingdom Come........146
40. How to Pray: Part 12 - Practical Prayer................150
41. How to Pray: Part 13 - Forgive Us........................154
42. How to Pray: Part 14 - Temptation......................158
43. How to Pray: Part 15 - Doxology.........................162
44. How to Pray: Part 16 - Amen...............................165
45. How to Pray: Part 17 -
Consequences of Prayer........................................168
46. How to Pray: Part 18 - Striving in Prayer.............172
47. How to Pray: Part 19 -
Prayer and the Word of God.................................175
48. A Happy New Year:
Goodbye to a Trouble-Filled Year.........................178
49. Our Certainty.......................................................181
50. “Life Goes On”......................................................185
 1

The Meaning of Jazz

August 17, 1954

G
ood morning, friends. One of the most significant
developments of our generation is to be found in
the field of music, and because it has such a strong
relationship to our spiritual condition, I would like to
give a little time this morning to a discussion of the
meaning of jazz.
First of all, I think we must recognize that modern
jazz has commanded and displayed some of the most
amazing talent and virtuosity in the history of music.
The purpose of jazz is clear-cut: to express emotion or
feeling as clearly and forcefully as possible without any
restraint or confinement.
In order to fulfill this purpose, the expression
of feeling, jazz has developed two important traits,
syncopation and swing. Syncopation means hitting the
theme and climax from the beginning; it involves riding
the basic feeling of the music full force from start to
finish. In swing, the feeling is pushed even further. The
individual musician is no longer bound to the sheet
music. He develops the theme for himself, improvises
as he goes along, and lets the emotion of the music

1
2 Good Morning, Friends

dominate him rather than the

sheet music and the written Ours is a
notes. The result is an emotional talented and
intensity and a nakedness of brilliant
feeling. The music either gets
generation,
under your skin, or it has no
meaning at all for you. This is but its
why a scholar like Richard M. genius is
Weaver has called it “a music not a drunken
of dreams … but of drunkenness.” one, and its
It eliminates order, structure, and product is
restraint in order to produce a
like jazz,
completely uninhibited expression
of feeling. in that it
And that tells us a great deal sacrifices
about our day and age. Ours is a law and
talented and brilliant generation, order for
but its genius is a drunken one, feeling.
and its product is like jazz, in
that it sacrifices law and order
for feeling. Our concern is not
that standards be maintained, but that our feelings be
gratified. We have a completely negative idea of freedom.
We talk about freedom, as the framers of the Atlantic
Charter did, in negative fashion, as “freedom from,” but
freedom is not from something, but for something. The
free man is the disciplined man, and the free society is
the disciplined society. A person or society that lacks
self-control is a slave to itself and its own appetites.
There is no freedom without law and self-control. The
meaning of jazz, and, for that matter, much of modern
art, is that man has surrendered freedom and self-control

A Collection of weekly radio messages by r.J. Rushdoony

 Good Morning, Friends 3

for the sake of feeling and is now the victim of his own
emotions.
In religion, the jazz mentality of our age tries to
satisfy and gratify people rather than to subject them to
the discipline of Almighty God. Not faith and doctrine,
but feeling and satisfaction are emphasized. They want
syncopated Christianity, which must be practical and
nothing more. They want swing religion: each man
takes what he wants and nothing more. He sets his own
course, and only his feelings are his authority.
But the Word of God is against all such religion. It
declares that our faith must be not what we want but
what God requires. It declares that the true starting
point of all faith must not be the individual and his
spiritual needs, but the triune God, God the Father, God
the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. Not our feelings
but God’s Word must predominate. Not what we say
is practical but what God says is necessary must be
preached to us. Anything else is a jazzed-up religion.
And the jazz mentality in religion today has led to
the elimination too often of doctrinal and expository
preaching, of catechisms, and Biblical teaching.
There is a penalty for these things. They leave us
strangers to the Lord who says, “Yea, before the day
was I am he” (Isa. 43:13). They give us too little of the
resources of the Almighty and too much of our own
feeble ways. All this leads to a fretful faith, one that
seeks, by taking thought, to add to its life and stature.
As Gissner has said, “What a man loves attracts his
heart like the magnet the iron.” If we love ourselves, we
seek a religion that caters to us. But if it is the Lord we
love, we are drawn to Him and His Word, and we rest in

A Collection of weekly radio messages by r.J. Rushdoony

4 Good Morning, Friends

Him with confidence and strength.

Too much so-called “practical” Christianity is
dangerously weak because it begins and ends with man
and his needs. Such faith is the jazz mentality applied
to religion. True faith begins not with us, but with the
Lord, and it gains more for us than the practical outlook
hopes to attain. Thus a God-centered and doctrinally-
minded faith is all important. And its promise is
this: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his
righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto
you” (Matt. 6:33).

A Collection of weekly radio messages by r.J. Rushdoony

 2

Vengeance Is Mine,
Saith the Lord
May 24, 1955

G
ood morning, friends. According to Solomon’s
beautiful words in Proverbs 25:21–22, “If thine
enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he
be thirsty, give him water to drink: For thou shalt heap
coals of fire upon his head, and the Lord shall reward
thee.”
Very simply stated, we could say that these verses
require of us that we replace vengeance with love in our
dealings with an enemy, a hater, or one who has wronged
us. But while this is true enough, we fail to understand
its meaning unless we know what we are talking about
when we say vengeance and love.
What is vengeance? Vengeance means literally
to vindicate by punishing the offender. The primary
purpose of vengeance is to secure justice through our
own effort. Vengeance means to vindicate by punishing
the offender: what’s wrong with that? Why are we asked
to avoid it?
Before we deal with that question, let’s look at the
rest of this proverb. We are told that by returning good
for evil, we can witness two practical results. First of all,

5
6 Good Morning, Friends

it brings a man’s injustice home to his own conscience;

it burns it in his soul; good returned for evil heaps coals
of fire upon the head of the guilty man. A good instance
of this in Scripture is Saul’s relationship to David. When
David twice spared Saul’s life, each time, it humbled
even the disordered mind of Saul and made him a
witness to David’s innocence and righteousness. The
second result of returning good for evil, is this, God is
pleased by our behavior and rewards us accordingly.
But meantime, what happens to vengeance? After
all, if vengeance means righting a wrong, what happens
to vengeance if we return good for evil? Does it mean
that evil is thereby bypassed and forgotten? Does it
mean that there is to be no punishment for evil? Does
it mean that we are to say that evil does not count, and
that we must wink at evil and therewith forget all about
it?
Far from it. The whole weight of Scripture is against
any notion that evil can be allowed to go unpunished.
Justice does demand vindication. Again and again we
have the declaration of Scripture that God is a just God
and that He is jealous of anything that infringes upon
His justice, that God does demand the fulfillment of
justice. Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself said that of all
unjust men, this must be said, they shall pay to the last
penny (Matt. 5:26). There is no escaping vengeance,
there is no escaping it in this life or in the life to come.
The claims of justice upon us are strict and inflexible.
Every wrong must be paid for, must be atoned for,
and no man can escape the inflexible requirements of
justice unless he find refuge in Jesus Christ, unless he
find in Christ the one who bears the penalty, makes the

A Collection of weekly radio messages by r.J. Rushdoony

 Good Morning, Friends 7

atonement, and rights the wrong

for us. Vengeance therefore is not The whole
our privilege; it belongs to God. weight of
Man cannot be trusted with Scripture
vengeance because man’s principle
is against
of vengeance is not justice but
retaliation. Instead of justice, any notion
instead of righting a wrong, man that evil can
seeks retaliation, and then you be allowed
have the kind of thing which the to go
feuding spirit represents. unpunished.
Early in Scripture we meet
Justice
with this spirit. In the Song of
Lamech, of the house of Cain, we does demand
find a man’s declaration that if he vindication.
has been wronged, he will avenge
himself not fairly and with justice,
not fourfold, but seventy times
seven he will avenge himself. When man is his own god,
he has to be the ultimate vengeance and justice also, and
man’s justice is cruelty.
God has ordained human government as a means
of partial justice, and reserved to Himself the final court
of appeals and the final and full execution of justice. We
cannot play God and take justice into our own hands; we
cannot, by acting, speaking, or thinking, try to usurp the
execution of justice. Because we are tainted by sin, our
personal attempts to be just mean only that we fall into
retaliation or winking at sin. We try, not to establish the
standard of justice, but to establish and justify our pride,
to hurt one who has hurt us.
For this reason, justice and vengeance cannot belong

A Collection of weekly radio messages by r.J. Rushdoony

8 Good Morning, Friends

to man as an individual. Man cannot be trusted with this

task of personal justice because inevitably he corrupts it,
inevitably he destroys the very meaning of it.
Therefore the oft-repeated declaration of Scripture
is this: Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord: I will repay.
Justice is not forgotten: the requirement of vengeance, to
vindicate by punishing the offender, is established. We
can rest content in this great fact: in the hand of God,
justice is sure and infallible.
Meanwhile, as we wait on the justice and vengeance
of God upon evil, we have a duty, to manifest love and
forgiveness. We are specifically told that God rewards
us when we reveal such behavior. Why? Because when
we return good for evil, we declare thereby that we
understand God’s own dealing with us in Christ. We
rebelled against God and made our own will our gods,
but the Lord in mercy placed the punishment for sin
upon the sin-bearer, Jesus Christ, who paid our penalty
for us and bought our salvation. Having received grace,
we manifest our acceptance of it by revealing it. It is the
man who has known the love and forgiveness of God
who is ready to be loving and forgiving, not because he
lacks a sense of justice, because his is a sharper sense of
justice in Christ, but because he leaves vengeance to the
Lord and fulfills his obligation, to reveal the redeeming
nature of God. This, Paul says, is our permanent
obligation, to reveal the redeeming nature of God. This,
Paul says, is our permanent obligation and debt in the
Lord, to love one another.
Remember, the Lord shall reward thee.

A Collection of weekly radio messages by r.J. Rushdoony